I thought I would post and update with pictures of my three year old rear facing. She is 3 years and 3 months old. Weighs 28.5 lbs and is 38 inches tall. The Britax Marathon that we purchased for her allows her to rear face until she is 35 lbs or until she outgrows the seat in length (when her head is less than one inch below the top of the shell). With how fast she is growing I have a feeling that she will outgrow rear-facing in length before she reaches the weight limits.
We have had her both rear and front facing depending on the situation in the car. She does well in both situations and doesn’t care about riding backwards. She thinks it is fun and knows we do it because it keeps her body safer. She has never complained about leg room or being uncomfortable. She likes to ride cross-legged or with her feet on the seat and her legs bent(like in the above picture). In our Jeep she loves to put her feet up on top of the seat back because the seat back is short (like below). She actually loves sitting backwards more than forwards because she can look out the back window and see out the side windows as well.
My favorite part about the Britax seats is how great of an install you can get with them no matter what type of car you drive. We have older cars (91 Honda Accord and 95 Jeep Grand Cherokee) it is difficult to get a tight install unless you are using the middle seat with the lap belt. This worked okay when we only had one child to put in the car but is very difficult now that there will always be two and sometimes three in our back seat. The seat belt lock-off’s make it very simple to install and I can not budge the seats one little bit. Because of our seat belt problems we wound up splurging and getting a Britax Companion for the new little one. When our baby outgrows this seat he/she will transition to the Marathon we have and we will purchase Camden a Britax Regent. That should be all the carseats we’ll ever need.
For research and links regarding the importance and safety of rear-facing a child past the one year and 20 pound standard please see HERE.
